"inter alia" is a short hand that roughly means "amongst other things, which I won't list here because it would obscure the point I am trying to make".
"Amongst other things" is the literal translation.
"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language[1])
If you wanted a shortcut you could have tried Chinese.
It would have taken only one or two characters as opposed to 10, and you would be using a living language with more speakers than latin (including people that only know latin quotations and a few generic phrases).
While if I was deciding what terms to choose ab initio from the universe of all possible words in all possible languages, my alibi here is that I studied law for a few years. Most of the phrases I picked up en route are mostly obiter dicta, et cetera, with only limited utility. Others are enormously useful; "inter alia" has escaped into other parts of academia.
But while ceteris paribus it might be the case that I could use Chinese characters, English has a far greater de facto affinity to, and stock of, Latin due to the historical connection commencing in the 1066 Norman Conquest and the imposition of the lingua Franca.
>While if I was deciding what terms to choose ab initio from the universe of all possible words in all possible languages, my alibi here is that I studied law for a few years.
Well, you should also work on the "syntax" thing, for I find the first phrase above ("while if...") incomplete.
That said, you studied law? That makes two of us. Only in my case, "studied" mostly means I've watched every "Boston Legal" and "Law and Order" episode.
>Most of the phrases I picked up en route are mostly obiter dicta, et cetera, with only limited utility. Others are enormously useful; "inter alia" has escaped into other parts of academia.
Has it escaped because it is enormously useful, though, or because it makes for "pretty" and "refined-sounding" phrasing? Because academia is full of such, well, to put it succinctly, bullshit. (I admit that in law it can be well known and have an additional well defined role that augments the standard latin meaning).
>But while ceteris paribus it might be the case that I could use Chinese characters, English has a far greater de facto affinity to, and stock of, Latin due to the historical connection commencing in the 1066 Norman Conquest and the imposition of the lingua Franca.
Sure, but with the Chinese conquest of the economy and commerce space, commencing circa 1995 and the slow financial, diplomatic and cultural decline of the US, one could say that the era of the previous lingua Franca is over.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Err, I mean 用事实说话.
(Come to think of it: does this succinctness mean that the Chinese can write their whole life story in Twitter with room to spare?)
> Wordpress won inter alia because ...
"inter alia" is a short hand that roughly means "amongst other things, which I won't list here because it would obscure the point I am trying to make".
"Amongst other things" is the literal translation.